Julian Koenig, Who Sold Americans on Beetles and Earth Day, Dies at 93

Julian Koenig, who is widely regarded as one of the 20th century’s most innovative advertising writers — a creative force behind an array of memorable campaigns, including for the original Volkswagen Beetle and the enduring environmental brand Earth Day — died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 93.

His death was confirmed by his daughter Sarah Koenig.

During some of the headiest years of American consumerism, the 1950s and ’60s, Mr. Koenig was a master of the intuitive and the counterintuitive, of the succinct and the sly, of the sales pitch that masqueraded as meaning.

“Think small,” he wrote in 1959.

It came across as a calling, a charge to be more practical, more responsible. But it was also a ploy — an eye-catching headline that Mr. Koenig wrote for an ad introducing the United States to the Volkswagen Beetle, the German antithesis of tail-fin America.

“To be amused by Koenig’s copy was to be flattered by it,” Bob Garfield wrote in Advertising Age. “The car that presented itself as the antidote to conspicuous consumption was itself the badge product for those who fancied themselves a cut above, or at least invulnerable to, the tacky blandishments of the hidden persuaders. ‘Think Small’ was thinking quite big, actually.”

The campaign included another ad with a one-word headline, “Lemon,” beneath an image of what appeared to be a perfectly fine Beetle. Smaller text explained that the car had “missed the boat” because of a minor scratch on the interior spotted by an inspector in Germany — in other words, that Volkswagen’s quality control was exceptionally rigorous.

Mr. Koenig wrote the Volkswagen ads while working for one of advertising’s most revered firms, Doyle Dane Bernbach. He had arrived there a year earlier with a reputation as a strong, unconventional copy writer. Earlier in the ’50s, he was involved with Timex’s “It takes a licking and keeps on ticking” campaign. Many years later, after he started his own firm and had a contract with Timex, he revived it.

Many people give him credit for writing the Timex slogan, though others have also claimed to have written it. Disputes persist over the genesis of many advertising campaigns, and Mr. Koenig and a partner, Fred Papert, spent many years rebutting claims by one of their prominent former colleagues, the art director George Lois, that he was responsible for the text in several ads, including “Think Small” and one for a chair by the designer Harvey Probber whose legs were said to be particularly well made.

No one disputed Mr. Koenig’s originality and talent. In 1966, he was inducted into the Copywriters Hall of Fame of the Advertising Writers Association of New York. He expressed his gratitude by skewering the association for giving awards based on creativity or artfulness.

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His 1959 “Think small” campaign for the Volkswagen Beetle was deemed the best ad campaign of the century 40 years later by Advertising Age, a trade magazine.

Sales, he suggested, were the only important measure.

“The hardest thing in the world to resist is applause,” he said at his induction. “Your job is to reveal how good the product is, not how good you are, and the simpler the better.”

In 1970, Mr. Koenig helped activists come up with a name for a national day intended to draw attention to environmental issues. One of the leading early ideas was “Environmental Teach-in.” Mr. Koenig learned of the event and reached out to the group, which was led by the activist Denis Hayes.

“Give me a few days,” Mr. Koenig told him, according to an email Mr. Hayes wrote a few years ago to Sarah Koenig.

“A few days later, we received a set of tear sheets for a full-page newspaper ad to announce the campaign,” Mr. Hayes wrote to Ms. Koenig. “He offered a bunch of possible names — Earth Day, Ecology Day, Environment Day, E Day — but he made it quite clear that we would be idiots if we didn’t choose Earth Day.”

The event was planned for April 22, 1970, Mr. Koenig’s 49th birthday. He said later that part of his inspiration was that Earth Day rhymed with birthday.

Julian Norman Koenig was born in 1921 in Manhattan. His father, Morris, was a city judge, and his uncle, Sam, was a Republican power broker in New York politics. Julian graduated from the Horace Mann School and earned a sociology degree at Dartmouth before enlisting in the Army during World War II. His poor eyesight kept him from combat duty.

He intended to write novels after the war but stumbled into advertising instead. Before Doyle Dane Bernbach, he worked at Ellington & Company. He was later president of Papert, Koenig, Lois, the first publicly held advertising firm.

In addition to his daughter Sarah, his survivors include a son, John; two other daughters, Pim and Antonia Koenig; and seven grandchildren. His two marriages ended in divorce. Advertising earned Mr. Koenig a very good living, and it was important to him that he received proper credit for his work. But throughout his life he also questioned whether it was a valid profession.

He spoke candidly about his concern in a 2009 interview for the public radio program “This American Life.” The segment was produced by Sarah Koenig, a “This American Life” producer.

“Advertising is built on puffery — on, at heart, deception,” he said. “And I don’t think anybody can go proudly into the next world with a career built on deception — no matter how well they do it.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A25 of the New York edition with the headline: Julian Koenig, Who Sold Americans on Beetles and Earth Day, Dies at 93. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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